ABROAD AT HOME

ABROAD AT HOME; 5 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

By Anthony Lewis

Published: November 1, 1982

WASHINGTON—
The Israeli Government already holds, or can easily take under a procedure it now uses, between 55 and 60 percent of the land in the West Bank. It is using most of the land not for pioneer settlements but for huge suburban developments. Israelis are attracted to them by cheap subsidized housing; at present rates 100,000 Israelis will live in the West Bank by 1987.

Those were among the facts that emerged in a remarkable briefing here the other day at the American Enterprise Institute. Meron Benvenisti, the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, summarized the findings of a study that he and other Israeli social scientists have made of the occupied territories.

Using official figures, the study throws the cold light of reality on an emotional subject. It shows that the Government of Israel has proceeded methodically and effectively toward de facto annexation of the West Bank - and that the process has gone very far. It is must reading for all those concerned about a political solution in the Middle East: Americans, Israelis, most urgently Arab leaders. For in terms of the West Bank's part in a solution the time is, as Mr. Benvenisti said, ''five minutes to midnight.''

Acquisition of West Bank land by Israel has been greatly simplified by a change in legal tactics. The Begin Government is using a curious provision of Ottoman Turkish law, carried over by the British Mandate and Jordan, that allowed the Sultan to take ''vacant land'' such as ''rocky places.''

What happens is that Israeli officials give notice of an intention to take an area. Local villagers have 21 days to object, to a board headed by the legal adviser of the Israeli Land Authority. The burden is on any objector to prove his ownership of a particular piece of land. He can do that only by producing a registered title, and there are reasons why even a family that has used a plot for generations may not have one.

Registration of land under the Ottoman code was a complex process that families often did not bother with except for urban property. When Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, only a third of its land had gone through the formal process. And in 1968 the military government issued an order ''halting temporarily'' all land registration. That order still applies.

The land situation points to a second reality exposed by the Benvenisti study. International law forbids an occupying power from making permanent changes in the law of an occupied territory, and the Israeli Supreme Court has said that the military government should restrict itself to ''intrinsically temporary'' orders for security purposes. In fact, its orders have made lasting and fundamental changes.

More than 1,000 military orders have been issued, each equivalent to a new law for the occupied territory. They amend the Jordanian code on such subjects as land, natural resources, the economy - and the amendments are not temporary. In the negotiations on autonomy for the West Bank, Israel took the position that the proposed ''selfgoverning authority'' should have no power to change the law.

A third reality illuminated by the study is that Israeli administration and legal changes are creating a dual system in the West Bank: one for Israeli settlers and the other, separate and unequal, for the Palestinian inhabitants. The new towns and settlements are administered as part of Israel in terms of budget and law. The Arab population is subject to the occupation authority.

The differences are striking. Government services for the Palestinians, for example, are at a low level, the investment in infrastructure virtually nil. The civilian budget for the 700,000 Arabs of the West Bank in 1980 was $14.6 million. The budget for Jewish settlements there in 1981 was $21.5 million, and planned government investment in housing for settlers is $58 million.

State subsidy for the new urban settlements, made possible by the help Israel gets from abroad in both official and private aid, makes the houses and apartments cheap. In Maaleh Adumim, a development for 40,000 people under construction five miles from Jerusalem, prices are a third to a half of what they would be in Israel proper. Israelis with no ideological motivation are moving in for economic reasons.

The Begin Government aims to have 100,000 settlers in the West Bank as soon as possible. That figure would be, it says, a ''critical mass'' - so large a number that no Israeli government thereafter could agree to withdraw from the territory.

That is why the facts brought out by the study are so urgent. For the United States, they point to the early end of what has long been the premise of American diplomacy there: an exchange of territory for true peace. For Israel, they point toward an annexation that will change the very nature of the Jewish state, incorporating within it a large, subservient and resentful Arab population.

But it is the Arab leaders who need most of all to understand the meaning of the Benvenisti study. They have maneuvered for years, avoiding negotiation. But unless they move now - unless they accept the fact of Israel and talk about ways to secure the rights of Palestinians in accommodation with that fact - there will be nothing left to negotiate.